New research confirms that the land under the Chesapeake Bay is sinking rapidly and projects that Washington, D.C., could drop by six or more inches in the next century—adding to the problems of sea-level rise.

Wildfires in California's fabled Sierra Nevada mountain range are increasingly burning high-elevation forests, which historically have seldom burned, reports a team of researchers led by the John Muir Institute of the Environment ...

In the virtual worlds of climate modeling, forests and other vegetation are assumed to bounce back quickly from extreme drought. But that assumption is far off the mark, according to a new study of drought impacts at forest ...

Coral reefs are struggling in many areas of the world due to overfishing, pollution, climate change, and other stressors. Despite the best efforts of scientists and conservation practitioners worldwide to assess and quantify ...

Along the muddy banks of the Pamunkey River in Virginia's New Kent County, Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have built an irrigation system that is allowing them to simulate the potential effects of climate change ...

For centuries, people have transformed and splintered landscapes and ecosystems in North America. This radical altering of nature makes it tough for scientists to analyze the continent's life-sustaining carbon cycle—the ...

Several rare upland bird species are being put at risk together with other ecosystem functions by the effects of climate change on the UK's blanket bogs, ecologists at the University of York have discovered.

Climate change, environmental pollution or land use changes – there are numerous influences threatening biodiversity in forests around the globe. The resulting decrease in biodiversity is a matter of common knowledge today ...

Has Australia's climate always been so dry? Have the tropical reefs around Australia always been there? What will happen to Australia's climate and reefs in the future? The answers lie deep under the ocean, five million years ...

Climate change

Climate change is any long-term change in the statistics of weather over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. It can express itself as a change in the mean weather conditions, the probability of extreme conditions, or in any other part of the statistical distribution of weather. Climate change may occur in a specific region, or across the whole Earth.

In recent usage, especially in the context of environmental policy, climate change usually refers to changes in modern climate (see global warming). For information on temperature measurements over various periods, and the data sources available, see temperature record. For attribution of climate change over the past century, see attribution of recent climate change.